THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

Publication Date: November 2004

Richard Andreoli's opening salvo of 'In & Out pisses me off,' begins a pleasantly bumpy ride through the elements of pop culture that gay men in their 20s and 30s hold dear. Even before it attempts to address the entirety of queer sensibility, Mondo Homo acknowledges the near-impossibility of this feat; the introduction then explains how the various contributors' experiences and 'small slivers of queer history reflects the Big Picture.' While icons like Judy, Liza, Barbra and the Bettes receive their due, they're now acknowledged to be part of a much vaster continuum instead of the top of the food chain.

But this reviewer digresses. Going back to Richard Andreoli, his incisive dissection of In & Out easily ranks as one of Mondo Homo's highlights and sets the biting tone for things to come. While not a bad movie per se, to Andreoli In & Out seems 12 years out of date, even back in 1997.

Another highlight quickly arrives in the form of Andreoli's essay 'Hot Chicks Kick Ass! ( or How Wonder Woman Saved My Life ) .' In this highly personal piece, he recounts his obsession with the 1970s Lynda Carter series and the profound influence it had on his life—something that many of his contemporaries ( this reviewer included ) can easily relate to. From there, Andreoli postulates that characters like Wonder Woman and Alias's Sydney Bristow will remain icons to future gay kids 'because they're forced to keep secrets about who they are and what they know—and like it or not, most gay kids still have to keep secrets ... . Until us gay kids have real gay heroes to emulate, these ladies will serve as metaphors for ourselves.'

But surely, you're saying, what about all the gay characters on TV these days? Well, unfortunately most of those shows ( at least those that aren't immediately cancelled due to low ratings ) are geared towards adults, and most of those characters aren't exactly role models. As Andreoli sardonically notes, 'Claiming the Fab Five as your role models profoundly limits your exploration or your total personality.'

Many other excellent essays in Mondo Homo reveal the broad spectrum of gay experiences within pop culture. Smith Galtney waxes lyrical about his epiphany upon seeing the iconic cover to Grace Jones' Slave to the Rhythm. He engagingly relates how this cassette introduced him to the world of gay music and how he found a new appreciation for the Smiths and the Pet Shop Boys after coming out. The bookish sorts among us will easily relate to Dave White's remembrances of how his voracious reading habits got him through childhood, only to discover that he'd grown up into a world that barely values its literary heritage, which in turn leads to a depressing-yet-funny rant on the subject.

With snarky glee and devastatingly deadpan accuracy, Mondo Homo meanders through such gay demimondes as fashion, fitness, gay ghettos, porn, liquor, and club culture ( to name a few ) , simultaneously celebrating them while sending up and tearing down their excesses. Amidst all this fêting of the lightweight and kitsch—such as 'Rules for Displaying Gay Pride in the Gay Ghetto' and 'You Know You've Gone to Too Many Circuit Parties When … '—are occasional moments of splendor and solidity. For example, Christopher Lisotta does a commendable job of chronicling the history of ONE, the magazine that 'captured the first gay Supreme Court victory in history' when its editors challenged the Los Angeles postmaster's obscenity charges, eventually paving the way for glossy zines like The Advocate, Out, Genre, Instinct and so on.

Mondo Homo is brash and brazen in its celebration of all things gay. Not only is gay good here, it's freakin' cool and awesome, and the book never lets you forget it. There are so many different ways of being gay these days, and Mondo Homo tries to laud them all. It doesn't always succeed—and has a peculiar fascination with dissing Jim J. Bullock—but it revels in our staggering diversity with aplomb, panache and pizzazz.